“Hybrid Governance” and the Politics of Legitimacy in the Myanmar Peace Process

This article examines competing claims to political legitimacy and sovereignty in Myanmar’s conflict-affected areas of “limited statehood.” In the context of ceasefires and an emerging peace process since 2012, non-state-controlled “liberated zones” and areas of mixed insurgent and government authority constitute new political spaces, where multiple state and para-state actors demonstrate governance authority, extract resources and provide services to local communities. This article explores the dynamics and implications of these developments with reference to the emerging literatures on “rebel rulers” and “hybrid governance,” and examines the practices of donors and aid agencies operating in these areas. I argue that external actors seeking to “think and work politically” should move beyond standard peace-building and development packages based on strengthening the state, and adopt more conflict and context-sensitive approaches. Effective state building should take account of governance structures and service delivery functions established by ethnic armed organisations, which although under-resourced enjoy significant political legitimacy.     

“Bad enough governance”: state capacity and quality of institutions in post-Soviet autocracies

This article contributes to current discussions on state capacity, quality of institutions, and political regimes. Our analysis demonstrates that the J-curve argument (“good institutions” in autocracies as compared to hybrid and transitional regimes) may not be generic and is not well supported by empirical evidence from the sample of post-Soviet countries. An explanatory model of the “King of the Mountain” is instead provided. Its focus is on the monopoly of political rent as a precondition for extraction of economic rent. It demonstrates an inverse correlation between the quality of institutions and the extraction of political and economic rent, and explains why an autocrat may not have an incentive to improve institutions that may make his/her monopoly vulnerable, and rather would prefer to preserve a low quality of institutions and “bad enough governance.” An analysis of a variety of external and domestic factors that may endanger this monopoly is provided. Finally, the autocrat's alternative strategic choices are analyzed. It is argued that better payoffs for the autocrat – paradoxically – may result from partial reforms and improvement of the quality of institutions. However, for various reasons, this is not occurring in post-Soviet autocracies.     

Reign-seeking and the Rise of the Unelected in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This article develops the concept of “reign-seeking” to capture the unprecedented collective action of the Thai professional and official elite prior to the 2014 military coup and the establishment of a military regime. It argues that this phenomenon reflects broad and deep political dynamics, for which the dominant scholarship on authoritarianism and Thai politics cannot adequately explain. The changing incentives of these supposedly non-partisan actors are interwoven with neo-liberal governance reform driven by a desire for depoliticisation and the minimisation of rent-seeking. This idea has been rationalised in Thailand since the promulgation of the 1997 Constitution resulting in the rise of technocratic and judicial bodies designed to discipline elected politicians and political parties. However, such institutional reconfigurations have consolidated the incentive for people considering themselves to be prospective candidates to “reign” in these organisations. As evident in the 2014 coup, these unconventional political actors – academics, doctors and civil society leaders – made collective efforts to topple the elected government in exchange for gaining selection into the wide range of unelected bodies. Governance reform in Thailand has hitherto reinforced the status quo, although the article further argues that reign-seekers should be seen as contingent, rather than consistent, authoritarians.     

Embattled authoritarians: continuity and collapse in Central and Southwest Asia

ABSTRACT

Why are some authoritarian leaders able to stave off violent challengers to their rule while others falter? This article analyzes several case studies involving a series of nondemocratic governments and violent non-state actors waging war and posits that different combinations of variables lead to dissimilar outcomes (ranging from “civil war/insurgency”, “regime implosion” or “foreign-based overthrow”, “negotiated peace”, to “strategic advance and retreat”). Accordingly, “embattled authoritarians” require a high level of “political-military aid” over time from a supportive foreign power to effectively combat “violent non-state challengers”. However, it is difficult for such governments to completely escape from “embattled” status, particularly if a supportive foreign power does not exert influence to set parameters for peace between the warring parties and the level of international interference (i.e. political-military aid abetting violent non-state challengers courtesy of other foreign powers) does not recede over time. This article concludes with a forecast on Afghanistan and Tajikistan’s respective futures and discusses how the onset of political instability within the former may serve to destabilize the political situation in the latter.     

Urban political machines and student politics in “middle” Bangladesh: violent party labor in Rajshahi city

In response to the mostly Dhaka-centered research on student politics in Bangladesh, this article aims to understand political competition, the role of patronage networks, political organizations, violence, and student organizations in the provincial city of Rajshahi. The article explores how student politics in Bangladesh shapes (and is shaped by) the political dynamics in “middle Bangladesh.” Student groups in Bangladesh are closely affiliated to political parties and serve as their most important source for mobilization in a party-political regime commonly referred to as a “partyarchy.” Campus politics is deeply integrated into the urban party-political machine in Rajshahi. Controlling Rajshahi University (RU) provides a steady flow of party workers for the local party machine. Thus, the RU campus is a space for organizing political (and violent) labor as well as an important source of revenue for and the distribution of benefits by local party bosses. The urban party machine, however, is not mechanically held together merely by the dispensation of inducements – instead, it is more chaotic and contingent on a form of strategic ambiguity that disguises the structuring effects of patronage power that keeps members motivated and engaged.     

Playing the “Game” of Transparency and Accountability: Non-elite Politics in Kyrgyzstan’s Natural Resource Governance

ABSTRACT

This article demonstrates the role of non-elites in the struggle for transparency and accountability in Kyrgyzstan’s mining sector. Most existing accounts foreground elite strategies and political machines in the governance of post-Soviet societies. Drawing on recent anthropological work on post-Soviet politics and applying it critically to the literature on neopatrimonialism, this article sheds light on the adoption of political game strategies by community members (non-elites) to advance their interests and challenge elite dominance within the case study’s mining communities. This finding responds to recent calls to interrogate the activities of non-elites at the margins of neopatrimonial contexts. The article advances a research agenda on how practices by non-elites shape the multiple meanings and enactments of transparency and accountability by elites in natural resource governance. It also points to the need to explore how and why “communities” exert their “agency” in governing natural resources within post-Soviet contexts.     

International Intervention and the People's Will: The Demoralization of Democracy in Cambodia

This article examines the deterioration in relations between two Cambodian opposition parties and the “international community” from whom they sought support during the 1998 Cambodian elections. It is suggested that the manipulation, by influential political actors, of internationally promoted political concepts such as “democracy,” “sovereignty,” and “the people's will” is problematic for mutual understanding between international and local political actors. In Cambodia in 1998, liberal views of the “people's will” as an amoral and neutral construct facilitating the delegation of authority were awkwardly but influentially conflated, by the election campaigning of the two parties, with a view of the “people's will” as a moral imperative to liberate the nation from alleged “traitors.” This caused widespread adherence, among the parties' followers, to views of the 1998 elections that were non-liberal and antidemocratic in a number of respects. When sharp differences in understandings of the political situation emerged between local and international actors, following the electoral defeat of those opposition party leaders, the fragile nature of a purported “partnership” between a self-appointed “international community” and the Cambodian people was exposed.     

Producing and Reproducing the 1992 Consensus: The Sociolinguistic Construction of the Political Economy of China-Taiwan Relations

Abstract

In the study of China-Taiwan relations, scholars view the so-called “1992 consensus” as essential to economic ties across the Taiwan Strait. However, such an argument overlooks the fact that the 1992 consensus was initially coined as a political formula concerning what “one China” meant. It was not until after 2008 that an economic logic was attached in a sociolinguistic way to the 1992 consensus by proponents of the 1992 consensus. Specifically, “1992ers” argued that China might sever cross-Strait economic ties should Taiwan reject the 1992 consensus. I thus argue that scholarly understandings about cross-Strait politics and/or economics are not unaffected by 1992ers’ interpretations. When 1992ers (re)interpret the 1992 consensus in economic terms, their discursive practices may change the intersubjective understandings about the cross-Strait political economy.     

Towards a model of asian plantation systems

This article is about the Shan opium-heroin problem which figures largely in many journalistic and academic accounts of political events in Burma, but which has, paradoxically, been neglected. Rather, it has been “hollywoodized” with images of “opium” armies, heroin “empires,” colorful drug “kings,” and warlord-princes, etc., to the extent that it has more or less become but a dramatic backdrop, an “exotic unknowable.” This article is a more mundane account of the opium-heroin phenomenon. I will deal with it from the economic-political perspective, with particular focus on the basic mechanism of the Shan opium-heroin industry. Specifically, I will deal with the actors involved and their role in what is the only viable and integrated (locally and internationally) industry to emerge from Burma in the over three decades of military rule. My contention, in sum, is that the Shan opium-heroin issue constitutes only a part of the regional and global informal complex of investment, trade, and profit, in which are involved a host of non-Shan actors, whose interests are primarily economic; that basically, it is a transnational/global agro-business, no different, in substance and dynamics, from any other lucrative agro-business; and that Shan peasants, and to some extent, rebel armies, cannot be in any way regarded as “winners” in, or the main beneficiaries of, the “illegal” and “unregulated” informal economy of investment, trade, and profit, that spans borders, regions, and oceans.     

Hidden in plain sight: political opposition and hegemonic authoritarianism in Azerbaijan

This paper examines the consolidation and maintenance of hegemonic authoritarianism in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Hegemonic regimes are characterized by their nearly total lack of political competition. Despite the presence of opposition parties and regular elections, the incumbent in these cases is reelected with 70% or more of the vote. What does it take to sustain overwhelming margins of victory in regular elections in the face of institutionalized opposition? Previous studies have suggested that either violent repression or institutionalized co-optation of opposition groups is central to securing long-term hegemonic regime stability. These mechanisms explain how rulers forestall potential opposition. Upon coming to power in 1993, however, Heydar Aliyev – like many post-Soviet leaders – inherited a genuine, existing opposition in the Popular Front movement. I suggest that in the presence of an intractable opposition, Azerbaijan's rulers have taken a different approach with regard to regime maintenance. Drawing on over 50 original interviews conducted during 6 months of field research, I identify the mechanisms by which the government has “hidden the opposition in plain sight” by making it effectively difficult for existing opposition groups to function as credible political parties. Since the mid-1990s, the Aliyev regime has used informal measures to prevent these groups from aggregating and articulating the diverse interests present in society from visibly competing in elections and from serving effectively in government to craft and implement policy. These practices have rendered the opposition technically legal, but completely ineffective. Besides weakening the opposition, these measures produce a series of mutually reinforcing effects – including noncompetitive elections by default and a politically disengaged society – that sustain long-term regime stability. The paper concludes by examining this argument in comparative perspective. Hegemonic regimes have proliferated in the post-Soviet region, and I suggest that this strategy is an important factor in sustaining many of these regimes.     

La nueva dinámica política de América Latina: temas para una agenda de investigación

Social transformations in Latin American have generated new phenomena which dominant political discourse, but also some studies of the political dynamics, are unable to express and even seek to conceal. To illustrate these developments the article analyses: 1) the emergence of new veto powers on the democratic system, quite different from the traditional one; 2) the celebration of the rise of “new middle classes”, a statistical conglomerate that refers to important social transformations but does not constitute a social category nor has a clear political expression; 3) the current debate on the regulation of the media, in which we argue that it expresses relevant socio-technological and political changes but is being held in a way that conceals undemocratic interests, both from governments and companies; 4) political parties and their difficulty to represent emerging social groups and generational differences; 5) civil society, which became fragmented and tanned by local political culture and should not be treated as an homogeneous and virtuous universe. We conclude that the consolidation of democracy requires from researchers and political actors to overcome the analytical and ideological paradigms that were, and still are, dominant in the region.     

Working On,Through and Around the State: The Deep Marketisation of Development in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

This article describes an important new push by international financial institutions towards broadening and deepening capitalist social relations in the underdeveloped world in ways well beyond Washington Consensus structural adjustment or even post-Washington Consensus forms of institutionally-oriented “participatory neo-liberalism.” Described here as the “deep marketisation of development” (or simply “deep marketisation”), this process is attracting increasing resources that are formally allocated directly to private actors around states, while also demanding and promoting shifts in state form and function that relate to cultivating “enabling environments” for capital and facilitating “access to finance.” The article begins by conceptualising deep marketisation and placing it in historical and political context. The second section presents examples of deep marketisation in action in the work of the World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, in the Asia-Pacific. The article concludes by highlighting some serious concerns with the deep marketisation agenda.     

The Impact of External Factors on Regime Transition: Lessons from the Russian Regions

While many studies have examined the external dimensions of democratization, the role of external anti-democratic factors remains unaddressed. Using an original dataset to analyze the presence and impact of external anti-democratic factors, this article aims to untangle the international dimensions of regime transition by singling out foreign trade. International post-Soviet trade links' impact on subnational political regimes in Russia is analyzed. Trade links between post-Soviet states and their regions are longstanding, dating back to the Soviet or even the tsarist period. The authors hypothesize that this variable was an important factor in regime transition in Russia's regions. The findings have wider implications for area studies and theoretical studies of democratization and regime transition.     

The vicious circle of post-Soviet neopatrimonialism in Russia

Since the collapse of Communism, Russia and some other post-Soviet states have attempted to pursue socioeconomic reforms while relying upon the political institutions of neopatrimonialism. This politico-economic order was established to serve the interests of ruling groups and establish the major features of states, political regimes, and market economies. It provided numerous negative incentives for governing the economy and the state due to the unconstrained rent-seeking behavior of major actors. Policy reform programs revealed these institutions to be incompatible with the priorities of modernization, and efforts to resolve these contradictions through a number of partial and compromise solutions often worsened the situation vis-à-vis preservation of the status quo. The ruling groups lack incentives for institutional changes, which could undermine their political and economic dominance, and are caught in a vicious circle: reforms often result in minor returns or cause unintended and undesired consequences. What are the possible domestic and international incentives to reject the political institutions of neopatrimonialism in post-Soviet states and replace them with inclusive economic and political ones?     

Die Ordnung des Konsenses

For some time now, the welfare state crisis has been at the centre of the academic and political debate. But not only the analysis of crisis is omnipresent, the solution seems to be a matter of course, as well. Reasonable and united actors, who initiate the so-called “necessary” reforms are in great demand. Competitive corporatist co-operation of trade unions, employer organisations and governments, which emerged in several European countries since the late 1980s, are considered successful examples of a consensus-based crisis management. The most popular example is the Dutch Polder model that became world famous as a consensus model by the mid-1990s. However, in spite of its popularity, consensus has neither been formalized as an analytical concept nor has its creation been thoroughly scrutinized. In fact the question remains unanswered as to how and under what conditions it could happen that different and initially antagonistic actors started to regard the same solution of the stated crisis as the only conceivable option. Referring to the Dutch case and starting out from an interpretative perspective based on the Governmentality approach of Michel Foucault and the Symbolic Institutionalism of Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, the article raises the question why supply-sided strategies came to be seen as necessary and sensible and how power relations are embedded in the process of consensus creation.     

Post-colonial folk dancing: reflections on the impact of stage folk dance style on traditional folk dance variation in Soviet and post-Soviet Estonia

ABSTRACT

The focus of this article is on traditional folk dance in Soviet and post-Soviet Estonia. Dance variation is analyzed through the prism of postcolonial theories to reveal the sequential effects of the colonial situation developed during the Soviet period. Specific causes and characteristic traits of the Soviet influence are explored. Colonialist echoes of the Soviet regime within contemporary Estonian culture are reflected in two trends in the variation of traditional folk dance: first, “contamination” of traditional folk dance with stage dance elements promoted during the Soviet era and, second, a regular search for “genuine” folk dance as a reaction to Soviet colonial heritage.     

Opposition visions for preserving Syria’s ethnic-sectarian mosaic

The excessive violence that has spread across virtually all of Syria since the 2011 uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Asad has so far prevented a serious debate about feasible solutions. Together with internal power struggles and the intervention of external actors, ideational factors and identity construction are playing a key role in shaping the dynamics of the Syrian conflict. Fear of exclusion in a future order dominated by radical Islamist forces is keeping the minority groups and some secularists close to the regime. However, there are also grounds for cautious optimism: as this paper shows, most actors from the moderate opposition acknowledge the need to take the minorities’ fears seriously and to provide them with guarantees of participation in a future political order, while stopping short of the option of a power-sharing arrangement between community representatives.     

Political Change in America and Implications for the US-Japan Alliance

This article examines the domestic political dynamics behind US president Donald Trump’s “America First” approach to trade and foreign policy, to understand better how long this strain of American economic nationalism might last and what it means for Japan’s national security strategy. The political base for Trump’s trade protectionism and apparent indifference to allies has roots stretching back into American history, but this movement has strengthened in recent years due to a combination of growing economic inequality in the United States, demographic changes, and the impact of fast-paced technology development and economic globalization. These political trends are likely to persist beyond Trump’s presidency, although some potential negative effects on Japan and the US-Japan alliance in the medium-to-longer term can be mitigated by Japan’s proactive foreign policy and other steps. The alliance still offers a great deal of value to both countries—now and into the future—but Japan should consider a slightly larger global leadership role in concert with others, even as the allies work to enhance their continued cooperation on shared interests.     

Auflösung des Liberalisierungsdilemmas

Scholars and unionists often claim an “excessive” flexibility and unilateral manager power in the labor relations system of Central Eastern Europe, while others observe “insufficient” flexibility and etatism. Beyond mere political reasoning the article provides an explanation for these contradicting diagnoses by reconstructing the varying influence of three conflicting concepts within the institutionalization process: economic liberalism, etatism and the continental European idea of social partnership. Focusing on Poland and the Czech Republic, it is argued that the varying influence of the three concepts contributed to permissive labor relations that clearly differ from Anglo-Saxon voluntarism: The labor relations are not permissive by formal standards but by deviation. During the 1990s the weakness of actors in regulating interaction and establishing powerful sanctions created a dilemma for liberalization. On the one side strong formal regulation by the state provided little incentives for employers to bargain. On the other side, a further withdrawal of the state from regulation did only ease unilateral decision-making of management as collective bargaining is weak. The impacts of harmonization with the EU regulatory regime are ambiguous. While establishing new minimum standards and regulations in new areas it also provided an opportunity structure for actors to push for the dissolution of the liberalization dilemma without compensating employees with more bargaining strength.     

Vladimir Putin and the Reaffirmation of Central State Power

Using post-Soviet Kazakhstan as a conceptual point of departure, this article considers the role that proactive framing and persuasion play in ensuring regime survival in soft authoritarian contexts. Drawing on interviews, opinion polls, news media, and the scholarly literature, the authors use three examples—Kazakhstan's OSCE bid, the global financial crisis, and "Rakhatgate"—that highlight the regime's varying proportions of persuasive and coercive efforts. The ways a soft authoritarian leader responds to potentially threatening events are examined. Non-material sources of regime durability are analyzed as essentials for understanding authoritarian regime dynamics and, by implication, for developing a full theory of regime change.